COACH 1941 — Native Son
photography: Sacha Maric @sacha_maric
An inspirational journey through the world of aritst and model David Alexander Flinn's (@dafstudio) unique perspective on NYC.Native Advertising living on his, DETAILS', and COACH's Web and Social Channels.
David Alexander Flinn, the artist and model, is making sure the stray cat in the backyard of his Williamsburg studio is fed. An early autumn rain is misting the unkempt patch of grass and as we wait for the tomcat’s arrival, Flinn talks wistfully about skateboarding in this neighborhood growing up, coming over the bridge from where he lived in the village. “We used to come out here and skate all the time because there wasn’t anyone, it was just a bunch of Spanish families, some Hassids,” he remembers. He conjures a picture of a merry band of neighborhood boys roaming the city, staying out late and jumping people, having all of the fun most boys dream about. To Flinn, anyone who grew up in New York, whether on Fifth Avenue or Forsyth, is a born hustler. In work boots, cut off jean shorts and a vintage tee, he looks lifted from a Gus Van Sant movie by way of Bedford Ave. Finally, sauntering out of a patch of weeds, the awaited breakfast guest settles in to his morning meal and that is our cue to leave for the real business of the morning; a new tattoo. “I’ve only ever been able to put my attention and care for others, which I think is a common problem but mine is quite exponential,” he demures about his feline preocupation. We make our way out of his warren like studio in a converted warehouse, stepping over remnants of pieces from past shows and yet-to-be realized ideas for an upcoming show at Envoy Enterprises in the Lower East Side, opening at the end of October. Flinn throws on a coat, lights a cigarette and we are off.
We are going to see Tamra who apprenticed Myles who gave Flinn his first tattoo when he was in his teens. Everyone goes way back and the actual ink feels like just an excuse to catch up, gossip, and swap stories with an old friend. The shop isn’t really open yet, but but we sneak in and get started on today’s piece which is a charming, if simple, drawing of a rabbit being pulled out of the proverbial hat. It is a design, Flinn reveals, his best friend Roman will also get some time that week. “We’ve just been pulling rabbits out of hats since we were babies,” he says with a laugh. There is no grand design for the tattoos that cover his body, other than feeling like he earned them. He says, if anything, he follows the Russian prisoner code where you are marked by your crimes; thief, murderer, boss. In Flinn’s case it is a death, a summer in Venice, maybe a heartbreak. Whether it is Tamra’s swift hand or the way time flies with an old friend we are quickly out the door and heading over the bridge to Sullivan Street and the old neighborhood.
Flinn’s folks were professors at NYU and the village was his playground which he remembers as mostly italians playing cards on the stoops. He stops to check up on his friend Camilla, who grew up on Spring Street, and is opening a French restaurant called Mimi’s on a sleepy block just above Houston. Her mother opened restaurants with Keith McNally and she was looking to bring something to the neighborhood for her friends to go that was easy and delicious, and decidedly not a ‘a scene.’ Flinn is proud of his friend, who he has known so long he can’t remember when they met, “…it gives me like the biggest amount of joy that we’re keeping it ours,” he says of the neighbhordhood and the group of kids he grew up with who are now tending to the roots of the city that raised them.
You can’t blame him for loving his hometown, remembering the first pair of python boots he bought at Western Spirit or the fights he got in walking home from high school at the Lab School on 17th Street. But more than the memories or the high jinks it’s the friends, the neighborhood boys and girls, that make the city what it is to him and what they learned together and from each other. “You run around, you learn some tricks, maybe you make some money and you learn the next trick together. Like the rabbit in the hat…” Magic, he explains, is something he has always been drawn to, and it seems there is plenty in Flinn’s New York, if you know where to find it.
Q: You skateboarded all over the city growing up, in the village and Brooklyn, what was it like then?
A: It was very, very competitive. And you know, as a kid in New York, that was really how you navigated, explored, and that was like your horse.
Q: So you spent a lot of time on the streets ?
A: We were just a bunch little crazy kids running around the city, with no restraint, no parental supervision. We just did whatever we wanted.
Q: What do you think of how New York has changed, having grown up here with a front row seat?
A: Of course it’s nice to be able to walk home with my jewelry out now and not get robbed like back in the day. But it’s also at what cost?
Q: What was your first tattoo?
A: I got the line of San Marcos on my chest, of Venice, the line of Venice. My friend Myles did it, three days after my 18th birthday. I got that one because I lived in Venice for three months when I was 16.
Q: Can you talk a bit about you show coming up?
A: It’s a continuation of this concept I’ve been working on for several years, which is this idea of duality in humanity. The last show I did two years ago focused on folklore. So it felt like a progression to do the next kind of pivotal age group, which to me was adolescence.